3D Design Crafts
(Taught)Plymouth College of Art

Accredited by: Open University Validation Services

Our MA 3D Design Crafts programme encourages the development of the individual designer maker, with an emphasis on material knowledge and design innovation.
The programme offers a cross-disciplinary approach to designer-makers who understand the value of material knowledge within the design process, and wish to examine this exchange further. The programme explores design thinking and material processes through projects which challenge traditional concepts in consort with material experimentation.
You will be encouraged to critically engage with current debates within the subject area and consider what it means to be a designer or craftsperson in the 21st century — where sustainability, material life cycle, added value, and approaches to market and sell are key issues.
We’ll also help you examine your current position in relation to design, materials and making, through a broad range of craft practice, contextual and critical frameworks. This focus on experimentation with materials and contemporary approaches to making innovative objects will lead you to find new outcomes through critical engagement — in a 21st-century context.
You will have the opportunity to reposition your attitude and approach to design materials and process, and establish your particular focus within the expanding field of design, crafts, and manufacturing.
The programme prides itself on offering and combining traditional craft processes alongside the latest developments in digital technology.

Course details

Modules

Through three sequential phases or modules, we support our students in investigating, testing and developing their ideas in depth.
The core tuition includes advanced training in specialist disciplines, research methods, critical thinking, research ethics, project design, professional codes and conceptual frameworks, and an opportunity for negotiated study under specialist supervision. All of our programmes have access to our outstanding workshop facilities.
By combining our generic modules with specialist assignments and personal project proposals, we provide depth and specialisation within each subject area, while also equipping you with robust approaches, methodologies and techniques that can be applied across the commercial, social and public sectors.
All students are asked to submit an initial research proposal on application to the course. This proposal should explain the kind of work that you want to create in the course of the MA or MFA programme, and identify your key professional aims. Of course, we understand the creative practice is all about change and development, so you won’t be stuck with these initial ideas. Instead, they will form the starting point for a dialogue with your tutors about your work.
The first module on the MA examines the role of research methods in creative disciplines. The focus will be upon refining your research proposal through a process of making to ensure that it can act as a robust framework for your study. The second module supports you to identify the kinds of collaborations and public-facing opportunities that will strengthen your identity as a creative practitioner. The final module of each programme may be submitted as a dissertation or as practice, depending on which pathway best suits your concerns as a creative practitioner.

Assessment method

The final module of the programme may be submitted as a dissertation or as practice, depending on which pathway best suits your concerns as a creative practitioner.